Going to the hospital to treat asthma turned into a nightmare for Bárbara Maia, 27 years old. The medical student woke up 36 days later with an amputated arm and a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease.
The information is from the Viva Bem website, on the UOL portal. The case began on May 7, in Belo Horizonte. Maia was preparing to start internship, which is the training phase of the medical course.
However, the internship was postponed after the student discovered antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), also known as “thick blood” syndrome.
The syndrome is known to cause the frequent formation of thrombi throughout the body. Bárbara says that, in her case, the disease affected her lung, right arm and head.
The student says that she was diagnosed with asthma years ago, and when she had shortness of breath, she thought it was caused by the disease. What started as shortness of breath led to two strokes, a tracheostomy and the amputation of one of the young woman’s arms, who dreams of becoming a surgeon.
When she took medication to control her supposed asthma attack and they didn’t work, the student decided to go to the hospital.
“There I took medication [para asma] and the symptoms stopped. I went home, but soon felt very short of breath again, I couldn’t even go to class, and I decided to go back to the emergency room,” she recalls.
Without the strength to even order a taxi, Barbara asked her mother for help, who called an ambulance. During a new trip to the hospital, doctors found that the young woman needed oxygen, but were unable to stabilize her condition. It was then that they decided to intubate her.
The student woke up 36 days later, still in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), without her right arm. While in a coma, she also experienced complications caused by the hospitalization itself, such as kidney failure and intestinal bleeding. Maia said she received 13 bags of blood to replace what she had lost.
Watch the student’s report
@barbaramaia68 Hi guys, my name is Barbara, I’m 27 years old and I’m an 8th period medical student in Belo Horizonte and I need a prosthesis that suits my future profession . For more information visit @barbramaia on Instagram #health #medicine #prosthesis ♬ I’m an original – Bárbara Maia
Confused with asthma, ‘thick blood’ syndrome is rare and difficult to diagnose
Heard by UOL, Helena Visnadi, hematologist at Hospital São Luiz Anália Franco, explains that APS is a rare, non-hereditary autoimmune disease and much more common in women.
The diagnosis is difficult and usually appears after complications, as in Bárbara’s case, where it was mistaken for asthma.
“There are patients who arrive with a history of repeated miscarriages, we will investigate and find this syndrome. But there are also these simultaneous thromboses, like hers, which we can classify as catastrophic APS”, she explains.
Visnadi also makes it clear that a first episode of thrombosis is not enough for the disease to be considered. According to the doctor, normally the protocol that checks the presence of APS antibodies only starts with the second occurrence.
“And it is important that the episode is not ‘provoked’, that it does not happen after surgery or immobilization — such as a leg in a cast. The question is when thrombosis comes out of nowhere”, explains Visnadi.
After a first positive result for APS, the test is still repeated six weeks after the thrombi to truly make a diagnosis, which makes the treatment process even slower.
